In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Yes, we look a bit different

The WordPress version and theme/template have both been updated for 2012, with a new front page layout showing excerpts/teasers rather than full posts. Please let me know of any accessibility problems you experience.

Addendum: a few tweaks have been made in response to feedback. They’re not major, but the main content is a little bit wider, the text is a bit darker and the headings for posts etc are not quite so shockingly dominant. If you’re not seeing these changes, you probably need to do one or more of the following steps:

  1. Refresh the page.
  2. If it still looks the same, try clearing your browser cache.
  3. If it still looks no different, try rebooting your computer.

139 thoughts on Yes, we look a bit different

  1. It would be great if the mods comments were still highlighted as such. At the moment they look no different to everyone else’s comments.

  2. I’m finding that the two sidebars take up too much of the screen and leave too little of it for the posts and comments, which looks like it will make reading long posts and threads more difficult. Still an improvement over the old layout, though, which was more than twice the width of my screen!

    I’d like to see the numbering of comments come back, too, and the quote option would be nice, too.

  3. MadGastronomer 1.1.2012 at 7:57 am

    I’m finding that the two sidebars take up too much of the screen and leave too little of it for the posts and comments

    There’s actually very little difference between the width of the main column and two sidebars in this layout compared to the previous one – there’s just more contrast in this design so it’s perhaps more obvious.

    Still, I’ll see what I can do with some little tweaks over the next few days.

  4. This is really hard on my eyes. Possibly making the white less bright and more yellow or gray would help, but right now the contrast between the white, the background, and the harsh reds is very difficult to look at.

  5. Regarding the width of the layout: it may be that the side columns really aren’t any bigger than they used to be, but _something_ is different: it used to be that when I zoomed up (about 4 times), the page would get wider than my screen and the righthand sidebars would conveniently fall off the edge of the scrollbar.

    Now, however, the side columns are always visible, which means that only half my screen width is visible for the actual content that I’m actually interested in. This is definitely not an improvement and makes the site harder for me to use.

    I also preferred the full post text on the front page, though I understand wanting more posts visible. Could the previews be made longer so we get more of each post?

  6. Hm. I must say if I had to choose between this and the old look, I prefer the old. It was plainer sure, but a bit easier to read…although I’m sure I’ll get used to this, just like I complain everytime Twitter.FB changes and then within a week it’s like “Eh, whatev”. 😛

    I agree though that numbered comments would be great to have, and also if there’s a way to re-incorporate some sort of reply-to-this-comment function? (NOT threaded replies, pleeeeease, I hate threaded comments…makes it so hard if you come back to a thread over the course of a day or few days, which happens often here, to know what the new comments are! No threading ever, please! :))

  7. I’d love to see a bit more of the original posts on the main page. Can you modify the theme to show 20-30 more words or so? It’s less of a problem for the regular Feministe posters, but with guest posts the author blurb often takes up all of the excerpt space! (nb: Don’t stop doing the author blurbs, please! I love quick access to individual guest posters’ blogs/sites).

  8. I am not at all fond of the pinkbeige — it’s like my two least favorite colors had a baby, but that’s superficial.

    But my main comment is to agree with another commenter above that there isn’t enough of most articles above the cut to make me decide I want to read them — the excerpts need to be longer.

  9. Hey, tig, I’m not actually sure what you did to quote La Lubu, though. I know how to turn something into a blockquote

    like this

    using the buttons available or just typing “blockquote” in carats, but I’m not sure without googling it what coding to add in to reference a specific source and I would guess that many other people aren’t as well, seeing as we’ve all stopped doing it since the quote function had to be disabled. Even if the coding instructions were provided near the comment box, I’d wager that a low-tech solution like reference numbers on comments would be better for those of us who are programming-challenged and/or who are prone to typing errors, especially when posting tired, angry, etc., which is fairly common.

  10. Just

    Just seeing how this looks (and trying not figure out why it’s looking wonky on my phone).

  11. love it! the colours, the lay-out, the highlighting – very clean. everything stands out! was the “blogroll random 10” thingie on the previous layout as well? i only just noticed it… heh. good stuff!

  12. I think upping the contrast would be helpful in readability. There’s something about the color palette that’s sort of hazy and blurry.

  13. Mostly a lurker here, but more on the numbered comments: on long threads, it’s easiest to navigate them by doing a search for roughly the last comment number you read. Not having numbered comments makes it much more difficult to follow a long conversation over a period of time.

  14. Wow, this must have taken a long time to create 0.0 Maybe a couple of suggestions? First, I think the main column needs to be bigger in its width. It’s a little bit difficult to read… it feels like reading a very long newspaper column. A thicker column would be a better choice. And second, about the contrast.. dunno, it’s rather difficult to read the comments. It’s brighter but it’s sort of fogey (?)

    Other than that, it’s a really nice new look 🙂

  15. I like having excerpts that you can click through to the full article, but do probably want a paragraph or two full to get a better sense.

    I am not really fond of the separate boxes for comments.

    I would love to see numbered comments come back, although you can reference by time, I suppose. I just find that a bit less elegant.

    The colors… I’m ambivalent.

    I do like that you’ve refreshed the look, though, and none of my complaints are big ones.

    Happy 2012!!

  16. I like the overall concept of the theme, but I kinda have to agree with PhysioProf that having the comments in separate blocks is kinda confusing. Actually, in general, I think the site would look better if the gaps between different objects (sidebars, posts, etc.) were removed.

    Regarding numbered posts, one thing that does get confusing is when posts get out of moderation, the numbering on any subsequent posts that have already been published changes, which makes any posts that referenced old posts incorrect. Perhaps if numbers didn’t change?

    1. Juke 2012/01/01 at 4:17 pm

      Regarding numbered posts, one thing that does get confusing is when posts get out of moderation, the numbering on any subsequent posts that have already been published changes, which makes any posts that referenced old posts incorrect. Perhaps if numbers didn’t change?

      Not having the numbers change can’t really be done. The comments are either numbered in sequence on the page or not, so when a moderated comment is published in time sequence, the numbers following that comment have to change.

  17. Yeah I’m lukewarm on this layout but I’ll probably get used to it. X2 on the comments re: numbered posts and bringing back the quote button.

    Also consigning on not having threaded replies.

  18. Cosigned on longer blurbs and comment numbers. Overall I’m in the “it’s … different. I’ll get used to it” camp.

    1. Fear not, comment threading will not happen. The PTB on Feministe despise comment threading with the fury of a thousand burning suns.

      I can easily make text in the comments darker for ease of reading. I’ll go and test out the comment numbering issue on my test template now and get that back for you as soon as I can, but that’s trickier than you might think, and might take a little time.

      The quote button is gone, I’m afraid. The plugin hasn’t been updated for a while and simply no longer works properly.

      P.S. re excerpts – what you’re currently seeing on the front page are what WordPress has auto-pulled from previously published posts. Authors can tailor the excerpts to be more effective content teasers in future. There also is a Blog Layout page, which shows the most recent 10 posts in more traditional blog layout – you can find it at http://www.feministe.us/blog/blog-layout/ and bookmark that as your preferred front page for Feministe if you wish (there’s a link to the more old-skool layout at the foot of every post underneath the author box as well).

  19. I *hate* this new theme. The way the comments are each on a separate bordered square is fucken hideous and distracting.

    To each their own. 🙂 I like the fact that the bordered squares allow me to pace me reading…but then, I read print books by using a scrap of paper under each line because otherwise my eyeballs seem to go all over the page and I have trouble concentrating.

  20. I like it. Having shorter posts on the main page makes it easier to scroll through on my phone.

    Happy New Years!!

  21. Huh.

    Well, it’ll take a few days (weeks?) to get used to, but so far I’m really liking the new layout.

    Happy New Years everyone.

  22. Tigtog, I’m also curious about what Jadey was asking about – obviously there’s the blockquote button, but as far as the link back to the comment, are you just using the permalink url and typing up an HTML link? (The <a href="blahblah" thing) I mean, that's doable but it's a bit much just to link back. So if there is a possibility of a "reply" option if not the old quote option, that would be great.

    1. Alison 2012/01/01 at 5:31 pm, yes I’m just using the permalink url and then the link button to add it to quoted text including the commentors name and comment time – which I do realise is less than ideal as a thread gets longer, but it is doable. Looking into the options though, there simply does not seem to be much out there in the way of plugins that will do a reply or a reply-quote anymore, because they’re a real drag on processing functionality. Basically the fewer plugins the better, because there’s less chance for php or database conflicts.

      Other options for commentors:
      1. have a text editor like wordpad open, copy a comment’s content there, copy the permalink url there, then format it to highlight only the text to which you want to respond, add your comment, then add it all to the input box (that’s what I tend to do on blogs where I’m not an admin, so that I can keep a copy if something goes snafu).
      2. If you use Firefox, install the Greasemonkey add-on and then discover the world of Greasemonkey user scripts which will work on all sorts of websites, not just Feministe. markItUp! For Greasemonkey looks like it will do much of what users who really miss the reply-quote function would like.

  23. tigtog:

    Not having the numbers change can’t really be done. The comments are either numbered in sequence on the page or not, so when a moderated comment is published in time sequence, the numbers following that comment have to change.

    Would it be possible to publish the comments in the order they are coming out of the moderation queue? This would also make it easier to detect moderated comments which will now typically never be read if you just check the end of comments.

    1. @matlun 5:43pm

      Would it be possible to publish the comments in the order they are coming out of the moderation queue? This would also make it easier to detect moderated comments which will now typically never be read if you just check the end of comments.

      While I’m sure that somebody could code up that functionality up in PHP, it would mean mucking about with WordPress core, which is highly unrecommended and not something I’m up for, frankly.

      EDITED TO ADD: It would also make it look as though the author of a moderated comment “should” have seen certain other comments in the interim between submission and approval for publication. This strikes me as all sorts of ethically suspect.

  24. tigtog 1.1.2012 at 5:43 pm

    yes I’m just using the permalink url and then the link button to add it to quoted text including the commentors name and comment time – which I do realise is less than ideal as a thread gets longer, but it is doable. Looking into the options though, there simply does not seem to be much out there in the way of plugins that will do a reply or a reply-quote anymore, because they’re a real drag on processing functionality. Basically the fewer plugins the better, because there’s less chance for php or database conflicts.

    Testing my skillz…

  25. Huzzah, I did it 🙂 And it’s not all that big of a problem, really, once we get used to it. I certainly don’t want to make a fuss over something small, since I know making a site run and load smoothly and properly is more important. Thanks for the info!

    1. @PoliticalGuineaPig, I’m not doing editorial, so I can’t speak for the others, but I suspect that they will still happen in general, just maybe not always on holiday Sundays?

      @VictoriaGaile, there is always the option of decreasing the font size a bit, but I’m aiming at better accessibility for those with access challenges trumping convenience only for those without access challenges.

      P.S. have you tried using the [CTRLminus] keyboard command to decrease the font size in your browser?

      1. I’ve just FTPed some stylesheet changes – you might not see them unless you refresh the page (if you still see no difference, you might need to flush your browser caches)

  26. There also is a Blog Layout page, which shows the most recent 10 posts in more traditional blog layout – you can find it at http://www.feministe.us/blog/blog-layout/ and bookmark that as your preferred front page for Feministe if you wish (there’s a link to the more old-skool layout at the foot of every post underneath the author box as well).

    It shows the complete post, but it uses the same newly narrower columns, which means each post is roughly twice as long. :b

  27. emkfeminist 1.1.2012 at 11:15 am

    Am I the only one who likes the old look better than the new look?
    Nope. I think the old one looked way cooler. 🙁

    Me, too.

    1. Using links to get back to referenced comments is a pain — on my browser, it reloads the page, and that takes several minutes (yes, multiples of 60 seconds.)

    Numbered comments are much better — I just scroll back, which is pretty fast (once the page has finished loading.)

    2. No plugins, please. My browser is badly behaved enough, thank you.

    3. Can we _please_ get a preview button? Pretty, pretty please? (And, no, “instant preview” is not a substitute — especially since in my experience it slows down typing to several seconds per keypress.)

  28. Not having the numbers change can’t really be done. The comments are either numbered in sequence on the page or not, so when a moderated comment is published in time sequence, the numbers following that comment have to change.

    Right, but what if comments were assigned their numbers as soon as they were submitted, as opposed to when they were published. Then you would have gaps in the numbers of the visible comments, but they wouldn’t be out of order.
    So, we would get:
    1
    2
    3 (in moderation)
    4 (in moderation)
    5
    6 (deleted)
    7
    Which would appear to users as:
    1
    2
    5
    7

    1. @Juke 6:40pm
      Comments are already assigned numbers in the database as soon as they are submitted (your comment number above is #423921 as you can see by its permalink), it’s just that those are the numbers for the blog as a whole, not just for that page.

      I don’t know a way to tweak WordPress to do what you suggest.

  29. Fair enough, I can see how my suggestion would probably involve more than just a simple tweak to implement.

  30. Also, I notice that when I post, many of the formatting tags get stripped out. (Using a mouse is difficult for me, due to poor coordination, so it’s a lot easier for me to simply type the tags in.)

    Can they only be put in using the buttons?

    The interface is not exactly intuitive (for me, at least) — maybe some notes on what you can and can’t do would be in order.

    1. There are a limited number of formatting tags which will be processed via the comments input. Basic XHTML tags such as strong, em, blockquote are allowed. Many/most other tags are not.

      I can put together a Commenting How-To FAQ reference page, but I’m about to go out and spend the day with my family, who I am currently neglecting. Expect it later this week.

  31. @TigTog, I’m using the font size that I need. I don’t need to see the right-hand columns at the same time that I’m reading the primary content. That was the point of my comment: I would much prefer that the right-hand columns would require horizontal scroll to be seen, than have the real estate for the primary content narrowed so much.

    Sorry if that was unclear.

  32. Victoria Gaile 1.1.2012 at 8:31 pm

    @TigTog, I’m using the font size that I need. I don’t need to see the right-hand columns at the same time that I’m reading the primary content. That was the point of my comment: I would much prefer that the right-hand columns would require horizontal scroll to be seen, than have the real estate for the primary content narrowed so much.

    I think that they probably can’t do that, because they’re contractually obligated to keep those ads above the fold.

  33. Tigtog: Fair enough. I know it’s a holiday season, but way back in October they went a whole month without the Sunday links, so it just makes me wonder if the editiorial team doesn’t want to do it anymore.

  34. @Victoria:

    What browser are you using? I just checked on Firefox, Chrome and IE and they all seem to work correctly (using ctrl+ to increase font size).

  35. There’s actually very little difference between the width of the main column and two sidebars in this layout compared to the previous one – there’s just more contrast in this design so it’s perhaps more obvious.

    On your screen, there may be little difference. On my screen, there is a HUGE difference. The entire page truly was wider than my screen, and the main text column filled the width of the window no matter how big or small I made the window, and I always had to scroll way over to see the sidebars. Now the main column stays the same width, which is quite narrow, no matter what I do to the window. I really suggest that before you implement a new layout, you try it on multiple screens, multiple browsers, and with multiple settings. What you are seeing is not what I am seeing. Please don’t tell me that I’m just misperceiving this.

    My girlfriend still has some tabs open with the old layout, and she’s going to screenshot it so you can see what we’re talking about.

    1. @MadGastronomer, apologies for being so sweeping in my description. I should have specified that the widths as defined in the stylesheet are very similar in both designs. However, because this template uses a different framework for various function hooks, and WordPress 3.3 has also updated/modified a heap of its own function hooks, how the new template renders those functions obviously can and does vary significantly from the old look.

      The previous framework was becoming increasingly untenable with how it dealt with processing such a large database of posts and comments, however. The shift away from it had to be made.

    2. P.S. @MadGastromer;

      On my screen, there is a HUGE difference. The entire page truly was wider than my screen, and the main text column filled the width of the window no matter how big or small I made the window, and I always had to scroll way over to see the sidebars.

      This was never intended to be part of the behaviour of the old template, and it is news to me that it ever behaved that way for anybody at all. That is why I made no attempt to duplicate that feature in the new template.

      I really suggest that before you implement a new layout, you try it on multiple screens, multiple browsers, and with multiple settings.

      This was in fact done, with multiple testers. Again, since the behaviour you describe was never intended to be how the old template behaved, I made no attempt to duplicate it.

  36. Oh…I cannot say how much I hate the color scheme. Right before I told God to fuck off…the last church I attended had “uniforms” for girls (ahem…”sweethearts”) that included a floor length, itch, polyester dress of approximately this color and red piping. I’m sure I’ll get over it, but I did want to vomit all over feministe when I first saw it.

    Otherwise I think its pretty awesome.

  37. I think I might be one of the few fans of the color scheme. Maybe it’s because I read mainly on my phone, so eye strain is an issue. These colors are really easy on my eyes. I also really like the preview feature. Would love to see comment numbers come back though!

  38. Thanks so much for all your hard work, Tigtog.

    While I don’t like almost any change, that’s my problem to deal with. The only thing I wanted to mention to you is that the commenting feature seems to turn dumb quote marks to smart ones. And it has the problem that all the programs that do that have: it’s not as smart as it thinks it is. So it turns dumb quotes into the wrong smart quotes, and that…bugs the shit out of me, because I am a punctuation/grammar martinet.

    As an example, in another thread, I wrote fuck ’em. So there should be an apostrophe in front of em in order to indicate that I’ve dropped the th. But instead, what should be an apostrophe shows up as an open single quotation mark, which is just wrong, and makes it look like I forgot to close a quotation somewhere. I hate this! My students do it all the time! I keep telling them to turn off the autoformat feature that does this on Microsoft Word, and they don’t, it hits my eyes like the sound of nails on a chalkboard hits my ears.

    There’s probably nothing you can do, is there? And I’m just a geek for caring. But I do! I can’t help it!

    1. @Kristen J 11:28pm, and here I was thinking that picking up on the red of the logo would be visually striking and nothing more! Hm.

      @EG 1:03am, I can’t promise that fixing the apostrophe is my top priority, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that peeves me too. It was probably somebody’s bright idea in the reset.css for the framework, so I’ll have to do a bit of digging to fix it, but it’s on my to-do list.

  39. Well, I must say when I first saw the new changes a couple hours I was quite unsettled. Things seemed too bright, the ads seemed too prominent, and I missed the old logo of the girl holding a shotgun and running through a city street rather than just standing in a white void. But like EG, I resist almost any form of change, at least in terms of website formats. This happens to me whenever YouTube changes its look, whenever Facebook changes it look. And then within a few days I forget the old look ever even existed and become happily acclimated to the new.

    This seems to already have happened with me and Feministe’s changes. So I can’t really complain. But yeah, things look pretty spiffy. I do currently approve.

  40. and here I was thinking that picking up on the red of the logo would be visually striking and nothing more! Hm.

    Ha! Well, M says he finds the color palette quite pleasant. I thought about vomiting on him instead for his temerity but decided that was not very nice since he was making lobster.

  41. oooh ooh! turf war! +1 for the separate comment boxes. i love it. like each of us getting our own special place to be in on feministe. heh heh

    the only thing bothering me aesthetically is that blue thing on the top left, the blogher voices of the year logo. maybe shift it under the fb icons etc on the top right? i don’t know, i’m not a blogger/designer… it just looks a little awkward.

    1. LotusBen 1:58 am – the current simple logo is harking back to the very first version of the blog – the streetscape was added in the last renovation!

      Kristen J 2:03 am, a lot can be put up with for the sake of lobster.

      Deepika 2:18am
      The blogher bar at the top is totally styled by them – I just added a call-to-function that goes out to their javascript archive and the rest happens by cybermagic, so I can’t change it at all.

  42. Couple of thoughts/suggestions:

    1. The text in the blockquotes is *significantly* smaller than the rest of the comment text, making it very hard (for me) to read.

    2. Cutting down on the padding/spacing between the elements (comment boxes, vertical spacing on the sidebars), might be helpful. They seem really separated to me.

    3. I don’t use a screenreader, but the read more buttons don’t seem very accessible to me. When I hover over the image, I get the title of the article again, with no indication as to what the image actually does.

    4. The highlighting of quotes on the main page article snippits is again very hard to read. The italics, plus the highlighting of each line, instead of the quote as a whole is quite distracting to me.

    I’m not fond of the colour scheme, but it’s something I can get used to.

    I know code changes/resdesigns are tough for everyone, so thanks for all the hard work, and for being willing to solict commentary.

  43. shimmoril,
    1. I’ll increase the size of the text in the blockquote.
    2. The separation of the elements is a deliberate choice meant to aid readers with mild visual impairments who do not use screen readers; to help make it absolutely clear what is what on the page.
    3. The read-more actually is text with a coloured background, not an image – it’s just the drop-shadow which is making it act like an image in some browsers. So screen-readers should process the ‘read more’ just fine, although I’m happy to modify it if screen-reader users are having problems.
    4. I’ll look into some alternate styling for the q tag on the main page excerpts.

    Thanks for the feedback.

  44. Like Lotus Ben i like the old picture of the little girl with the BIG gun running through the street; reminds me of my granddaughters:).

  45. The comment numbers don’t show up in Firefox 3.6, can see them fine in google chrome or my smartphone browser but no numbers in firefox 🙁

    1. Dragon Breath – the little girl still has a big gun! It’s just that she is not quite so big. Big header images take up too much screen estate.

      @Lara Emily Foley, @Jadey – most recent version of Firefox is now 9.0.1, actually. Lara, you’re missing out by a ton of enhanced security features, let alone user enhancements generally (like actually HTML5 compliant!), by not upgrading.

      @Kristen J – I just doublechecked in IE8, the numbers are showing up fine for me. What’s your version?

      @Lara again – I’ll check into what happened to the mobile plugin. I can see the tracks of where it used to live in the back-end, and I’m not quite sure why it was dropped.

      @Juke, thanks for the line-height info re the numbers.

  46. another note: I liked the fact that when a mod/article author was highlighted, it also said why they were highlighted. Helpful for new people — a lot of blogs alternate highlights or something to make the breaks between comments clear, and a new person might not pick up that that is the Highlight Of Modliness.

    1. @sb, somehow I jumped over your comment:

      I liked the fact that when a mod/article author was highlighted, it also said why they were highlighted. Helpful for new people — a lot of blogs alternate highlights or something to make the breaks between comments clear, and a new person might not pick up that that is the Highlight Of Modliness.

      Unfortunately the previous way relied on a background image on Moderator/Author comments, which was not accessible to those with screen readers anyway, so this time around I just went for more minimal moderator styling to keep everyone on the same foot. I might borrow an idea from another template I remember which inserts a whopping big asterisk on moderator comments if that’s a technique that will also be seen in screen readers.

  47. The comment numbers don’t show up in Firefox 3.6, can see them fine in google chrome or my smartphone browser but no numbers in firefox 🙁

    They show up fine in Firefox 8.0, which is the most recent version – you may need to update your browser.

  48. Hmmm…now in IE I’m getting comments all numbered 1. Which would simplify, but not really clarify. 😉

  49. They show up fine in Firefox 8.0, which is the most recent version – you may need to update your browser.

    Ewwwwwww. I love 3.6 have no interesting in 8 🙁

  50. While I’m in here what ever happened to the Mobile formatted website. I miss using that on my phone

  51. A very minor nitpick: The line numbers get their tops cut off if they include the digits 6 or 8. Doesn’t hinder readability but it looks kinda funny.

  52. Am currently on a library computer as my own internet is down (possibly for a few days), this one’s set up with Firefox 3.6. As I can’t go around updating this, any way of putting post numbers on this version of Firefox would be appreciated 🙂

  53. Yay, numbered comments are back!

    I’m liking most of the new layout, but it looks really ugly on my 20″ widescreen monitor. Less than 1/3 of the page actually has anything on it, meaning lots of scrolling through comments. I don’t know if there is any easy fix for that, though.

    1. @Chataya, that empty space is full of two sidebars at the top of the page, they just don’t go all the way down the page (as you probably recognise given your no easy fix remark). The old theme looked exactly the same for me at least, on long threads. We have to have the sidebars to display the ads which bring in the revenue that supports Feministe.

  54. Regarding accessibility for mod/author flags, how about just including the words in parentheses or a separate line.
    Like:

    96. tigtog(moderator, author) 1.2.2012 at 10:01 pm | Permalink

    or

    96. tigtog 1.2.2012 at 10:01 pm
    Moderator, Author

    1. @Juke, I’m trying to work out something that is legible and aesthetically effective for those with normal vision, is also compatible with screen readers, and which I can insert via a function hook in the child theme rather than having to edit the core template framework. It might take me just a wee little bit of time to come up with something I’m happy with. Your suggestions have merit, though.

  55. @Chataya: Well, you don’t want to make it too wide. It’s well documented that narrower columns are easier to read. That’s why newspapers are formatted in columns.

  56. I think it looks good visually, but I have to say I hate that the full posts aren’t being shown on the home page anymore. I find it annoying to have to go back and forth to read posts. Especially when the full post is only a paragraph or even just a few lines longer. Like this one, for instance. I just don’t see the point. Unfortunately, it seems like more blogs that I read are using this format. *sigh*

    I am curious about the reasoning behind this kind of format and would appreciate any info about it. And yes, I think “Because we like it that way” is a valid answer. It’s your blog after all. It should look however you want.

    1. @JohnM, have just realised that there aren’t any Next Post/Previous Post nav buttons on single posts in this framework except at the very bottom of the comments box – I’ll get working on adding another pair in at the foot of the post itself. In the meantime on single post pages just hit the END button on your keyboard to find the Previous/Next buttons for moving between posts without going back to the home page.

      There’s a couple of reasons beyond just aesthetics for moving to excerpts only on the front page (and in archives pages) –
      * many search engines penalise a site in their rankings for having duplicate-content on the front page and on the post page. Tailored excerpts which paraphrase a key point made in the post bypass the duplicate-content problem, and make it more likely that relevant Feministe posts will come up in the first page of search results.
      * new readers (and many regulars) on a blog are more likely to engage with older posts if they don’t have to hit the page-down button so much to find them. This means that discussions tend to mature over longer periods instead of just tending to be dropped abruptly once they move past the third screen-down or so. I realise that some folks might mightily disagree regarding their personal preferences otherwise, but there are people who study this sort of thing, and this is the most common documented behaviour.

  57. Using Firefox 9 (I SWEAR they jumped versions so quick to take over the market of people who thought IE being at 9 was more advanced…) and I love the new look!

  58. I like the new look, and love that numbered comments are back. tigtog, you’re a total champion with all this. I do think that the idea of a “front page,” where only excerpts are posted, so that I have to click back and forth to read each one, rather than a proper blog with proper posts all on a page for me to read, is the death knell of Enlightenment society as we know it and a betrayal of the children to whom we are leaving a broken world, but I understand that preferences will differ.

  59. This is silly and nitpicky, but the layout editor in me really wants more space between the comment header and the top of the box. But thank you for returning the comment numbers and making the text black instead of gray!

  60. @Kristin A

    (I SWEAR they jumped versions so quick to take over the market of people who thought IE being at 9 was more advanced…)

    (this isn’t so much directed at Kristin A as it is just a general not for those of you still on FF 3.6 and thinking “9?”)

    What happened was that starting with version… 5 or 6 they decided to just release a new version every two months or so. What happened was that improvements were being stuck in development hell for 18 months when they could have been pushed out to users much earlier just so they have BIG version changes.

    Now stuff just comes out as it becomes ready.

    Which is to say we’re going to be at Firefox 20 here in a year or two and the number really should be ignored from now on (especially now that they’re putting in Chrome-esque automatic updating).

  61. Second feedback on comment numbers:

    We have comment numbers now so I can reference other people’s comments, but they’re not physical numbers but *images*. This still makes it difficult to navigate a thread — I can’t just have my browser search for the last numbered comment I remember; instead, I have to scroll down the page and hunt manually.

    Which is, okay, a minor problem, and I’m glad we’ve got some sort of numbers available, but still — if you have any way of restoring the numbers so that they can be found by my browser, that would be awesome.

    1. @LMM, thanks for pointing that out. I’ve got no idea why the framework author has made the comment numbering display as an image rather than as an actual number, and I’ll take it up on his support forums and see if he has got a workaround.

  62. This new format looks great on a smaller screen resolution (1028×764 and smaller) but not so great on a larger one. Is it possible to make the width of this post/comment column flexible in relation to screen-size?

  63. I’m finding that using my mobile browser, no usernames are shown on comments at all, which really spoils my enjoyment of whatever discussion is going on.

  64. I can’t tell which is worse: that I can’t see numbers in this version of Firefox, which is the latest that runs on my poor laptop, or that the version of Firefox dictates whether numbers display.

    I mean, if Flash didn’t work proper, that’d be one thing.  But an li tag?!

    1. Just letting you all know that I’m still listening and absorbing feedback. I just don’t have any good news for the latest wishlist items yet.

      XtinaS, yes apparently calling the comment numbers as I have done via CSS gets the *browser* to digitally generate the comment numbers (this is presumably why some people are only seeing each comment numbered #1). There is supposed to be a way to insert the numbers via PHP as a proper text element rather than just as a digital artifice, but I’m getting conflicting advice on it. Will get there!

  65. OK, we now have actual text-element comment numbers, at least for me. Please refresh your browsers if you’re not seeing them (the new numbers don’t have a decimal point after them)

  66. 🙂 oh and btw thanks for recommending firefox 9 faster then 3.6 while still keeping the3.6 like interface that was lacking in firefox 4 and beyond

  67. @tigtog – Thanks for the reply! Interesting point about new reader habits. Never would have figured that. Another exciting episode of Just because you do it that way doesn’t mean everybody does!

  68. The blockquote formatting on today’s Melissa Harris-Perry is weird. The picture causes the entire quote to be squeezed into a couple of inches, and leaves a large blank area. I’m not sure if this can be fixed in the stylesheets, or if you need to edit the post itself, but it’s something to note.

    Also, the “Feministe Retro-fitted” link in the footer 404s.

    1. @Juke, the post has been fixed – thanks for drawing it to our attention. And I will create the proper page for that theme on my portfolio when I get a brace of round tuits!

  69. For some reason, every now and then, the Feministe webserver decides my browser (Firefox 2.0.0.1 for Linux) is really a mobile phone. When that happens it (a) won’t show me anything until I turn on JavaScript and (b) when I do, it shows each topic as a single horizontal bar.

    Usually, clearing all private data and restarting the browser works, but sometimes I have to go into my .mozilla directory and trash everything that doesn’t look absolutely essential.

    Anybody run into this? Any suggestions why this is happening?

  70. Specifically, it says:

    Notice

    JavaScript for Mobile Safari is currently turned off.

    Turn it on in Settings › Safari
    to view this website

  71. I think that’s happening for me? I’m on Firefox 9.0.1, and sometimes it just shows up as single-line topics.

    Usually going to a thread or coming back later fixes it, but it’s still rather annoying.

    1. I’ll look into settings and see if I can stop it doing that for you. It should only display for those on mobile devices, obviously, but maybe there’s a forcing setting somewhere that needs to be turned off.

  72. For what it’s worth, if I do turn on JavaScript, and try to turn off the Mobile Theme or whatever (there’s a fancy button at the bottom with an “on” button and a blank button), it doesn’t work. Screen gets redrawn, and it still says “on”.

    I’ve run into this on another site (Angry Black Woman.)

  73. The author info box at the bottom of articles doesn’t seem to be updating the number of posts written.

    Ie. look at any two articles by Jill – both will show 4581 posts written. The Guest Blogger is stuck at 84.

    1. @AMM @thinksnake, I did fiddle around with settings, but I don’t know whether it made a difference for you.

      @shimmoril, the author info box is supposed to display the same number of posts written at the bottom of all posts for each author. It’s not a running total of ‘this is the authors xth post’, it’s a total total of all the posts by that author currently in the database. Because new articles have been published since you wrote that comment Jill’s total now says 4582, Guest Blogger now says 85.

  74. Hasn’t come up broken since then, but I’ve also changed to a different computer altogether since then, so can’t say for sure. But has been definitely working for me regardless 🙂

  75. I’ve fixed the blockquote on that post with a quick formatting hack, but I will look into fixing blockquotes properly when juxtaposed next to images.

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